News Story

New first-person voxel-based RPG/builder called Planets³ on Kickstarter

Indie studio Cubical Drift has announced Planets³ and launched a month-long Kickstarter campaign. It's a voxel-based RPG and builder set a universe with cubed worlds, multiple players and is story-driven.

Questing will play a major role alongside adventuring, and building/crafting. Each cubed world is "composed of nearly 30 trillion blocks." Currently Planets³ is about 10% complete.

The France-based team is asking for $250k from Kickstarter backers, but have plans to expand more into space as time goes on. Full release is expected in 2017.

It's certainly an ambitious voxel-based game especially as the story would involve multiple worlds to explore and plunder for riches. We'd also get mounts in the form of animals and vehicles we can craft ourselves. Stretch goals include a playable alien race, a PvP planetary system, Linux and Mac versions, train system and more.

"Planets³ adventures take place in a universe entirely made of 25cm³ blocks (voxels). Each planet represents thousands of billions of blocks. The blocks can be combined in a variety of ways to build beautiful objects and landscape elements of all shapes and size," describes Cubical Drift in their Kickstarter.

"In this completely open world, freedom is the key. With entire surroundings that can be completely modulated, destroyed and recreated as you wish, the only limit in Planets³ is your own imagination! But this freedom comes with its own set of challenges. For instance, to leave our planet and visit the universe, players must unlock their own personal spaceship, or build one themselves… And you’ll need the natives to grant you their trust, so you can master the craft system and learn new skills."

"You’ll be able to level up your avatar and improve your character’s skills while playing." It will follow in the RPG footsteps of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls where the more you do something the better you become at it. Technical skills are improved through exploration and defeating better equipped enemies.

There'll be dungeon crawling in Planets³ and we'll decide how we fight.

"You may want to be a heavily armed warrior, fearing nothing except the lack of enemies. But perhaps you will prefer to play an undetectable ninja, sniping enemies from a long distance or sneaking up from behind… Players teaming up can combine their favorite fighting styles, so that, together, they can take on the most challenging of enemies."

Check out the Planets³ Kickstarter campaign to learn more. Its first release launches on PC in Autumn 2015.